Journal of World Business 49 (2014) 245252

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Journal of World Business

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Talent management and expatriation: Bridging two streams of

research and practice
Jean-Luc Cerdin a,*, Chris Brewster b,c
a

ESSEC Business School, Management Department, Avenue Bernard Hirsch, B.P. 105, 95021 Cergy-Pontoise Cedex, France
Henley Business School, University of Reading, Reading RG6 6UD, UK
c
Faculty of Business Studies, University of Vaasa, Finland
b

A R T I C L E I N F O

Article history:
Available online 19 December 2013
Keywords:
Talent management
Expatriation
Career capital
Development

A B S T R A C T

This paper argues that talent management and expatriation are two signicantly overlapping but
separate areas of research and that bringing the two together has signicant and useful implications for
both research and practice. We offer indications of how this bringing together might work, in particular
developing the different results that will come from narrower and broader concepts of talent
management. Our framework denes global talent management as a combination of high-potential
development and global careers development. The goal of the paper is to lay the foundations for future
research while encouraging organizations to manage expatriation strategically in a talent-management
perspective.
2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Talent management and expatriation: bridging two streams

of research and practice
In the international human resource management (HRM)
literature, the management of expatriation is accorded signicant
status since it is seen as a key contributor to rm performance. Yet,
despite this, it appears that expatriate management remains a
weakness for many organizations (Lazarova & Cerdin, 2007;
Shaffer, Kraimer, Chen, & Bolino, 2012) and is often somewhat
separated from the organizations global policy of human resource
management. Developing the key talent in the organization is
usually managed by a different set of specialists than those who
manage expatriation. Expatriates are usually selected by line
managers (Harris & Brewster, 1999) and expatriation is often
managed by administrative HRM specialists who are focused on
the reward and taxation package, with little linkage to training,
performance management, individual career development or longterm careers (Cascio, 2012; van der Heijden, van Engen, & Paauwe,
2009). In short, expatriation management and talent management,
while undeniably closely related, are rarely studied together.
We propose to explore the connection between talent
management and expatriation to explain how they interact and
to elaborate the consequences of this relationship for both elds of
study. Global talent management seems to be the right label for

* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: cerdin@essec.fr (J.-L. Cerdin),
c.j.brewster@henley.reading.ac.uk (C. Brewster).
1090-9516/$ see front matter 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jwb.2013.11.008

capturing the connection between talent management and

expatriation (Scullion, Collings, & Caligiuri, 2010; Tarique &
Schuler, 2013). However, we can identify two streams in this
relationship, in line with two conceptions of talent management,
namely (1) the elitist, or talent segmentation, approach focused on
a few chosen individuals, often termed high potentials, in whom
the organization invests, and (2) a broad aspect of Human Resource
Management where all employees are considered as talent. We
propose to explore both so as to introduce a framework for
understanding the relationship between talent management and
expatriation. This can serve as a basis for future research and help
organizations better manage their expatriates within the logic of
talent management.
Our analysis and our examples are from corporately assigned
expatriates and the messages in this article are clear for them. We
believe that they may also apply to other forms of international
experience, such as migrants, self-initiated expatriates and shortterm assignees (Al Ariss & Crowley-Henry, 2013; Ariss, Vassilopoulou, Ozbilgin, & Game, 2013; Fang, Samnani, Novicevic, & Bing,
2013; Guo, Porschitz, & Alves, 2013; Vaiman & Haslberger, 2013).
However this article is focused on the traditional expatriate and
we leave research into the other forms for the future.
2. The talent segmentation approach to expatriation and talent
management
The talent segmentation approach to expatriation stems from
the rationale for its use. The classic explanation of organizations
reasons for using expatriation (Edstrom & Galbraith, 1977;

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J.-L. Cerdin, C. Brewster / Journal of World Business 49 (2014) 245252

Hocking, Brown, & Harzing, 2004) still holds: they use it (1) to
provide skills in a market where they are hard to nd, (2) to
develop the organization through control and coordination, and (3)
to create learning amongst expatriates that will benet the rm.
For the rst goal, the organizations immediate priority is to ll
positions, which leaves little to no room for consideration of
individuals careers; the second goal may be about imposing
central control, with the same effects, or about developing coordination through global mindsets in the organization, which may
involve changing minds at headquarters as well as in the
subsidiaries, and would be include career considerations; and
for the third goal, the development of individual careers is the
focus (Cerdin, 2008). We draw a distinction that is not usual in the
literature, but we believe to be common in practice, between
control and co-ordination. The two objectives may be equally
strategic in their impact upon the expatriate and the organization.
Controlling roles are much less likely to have a talent-management
aspect than are co-ordination roles. Hence, for the latter, as for
those (rare) expatriation roles that are explicitly designated as
developmental, talent management is a key focus, as the
organization is mindful of the development of the individuals
skill set, and of the capabilities of those they interact with a point
we will return to.
The segmentation approach to strategic talent management
focuses on those who are included in the organizations
pivotal talent pool and who occupy, or are being developed to
occupy, pivotal talent positions (Collings & Mellahi, 2009: p.
306). Expatriates may well belong to this group. The role
expatriates, particularly managerial expatriates, play in knowledge transfer (Bonache & Brewster, 2001) or in diffusing
managerial practices from headquarters to subsidiaries and
vice versa underlines their importance as amongst the key
employees who are the object of segmentation talent management (Bjorkman, Barner-Rasmussen, & Li, 2004; Cerdin, 2003;
Kamoche, 1997).
This approach to talent management combines a strategic use
of expatriates with a strong focus on talent management, the aim
being to develop individuals for further responsibilities within the
organization. In that sense, talent management is synonymous
with the traditional high-potential approach. Organizations
identify individuals who they expect, in the long term, to be able
to occupy top-management positions (CIPD, 2009). It is wellknown that major multinational corporations (MNCs) such as
Colgate Palmolive and Philips, for example, restrict their senior
positions to employees who have worked in more than one
country. International experience is a prerequisite to get promoted
above a certain level within those organizations. High-potentials
are assigned to international positions so that they may develop
new skills, but it is also a way to test their abilities as tomorrows
top managers. In this sense, the high potentials as expatriates are
critical for the organizations current goals as well as for its longterm objectives. The segmentation perspective on talent seems
prevalent in the literature (Swailes, 2013). This talent segmentation perspective is consistent with Paretos law of the vital few,
which, in this case, suggests that about 80% of an organizations
value adding derives from about 20% of its employees (Swailes,
2013: p. 32).
The segmentation approach to talent management addresses
not only top positions, but also key positions. Collings and Mellahi
(2009: p. 305) suggest that talent management aims to identify key
positions that differentially contribute to the organizations
sustainable competitive advantage. The relationship between
the talent segmentation view involved in some expatriation
assignments and the segmentation view of talent management is
apparent in international developmental assignments, but goes
beyond that.

We can map the link between expatriation purposes and talent

management as shown in Fig. 1. The key axis is the diagonal one
from bottom left to top right. Expatriate assignments in the bottom
left corner (short-term business objectives) will include purposes
such as position-lling, opening new markets and technology
transfer that may have little or no link to talent management nor
have aspects of talent management as primary objectives. As the
strategic management purposes of the assignment become more
long-term so the talent management element increases until
organizations are investing in solely individual development. We
see that assignments focused on control will require closer
afliation with HQ with less opportunity for talent development
and those focused on co-ordination will create more individual
learning. This is, of course, a gradually sliding scale so that few
assignments will t solely and exactly into the named categories
and not include elements of other kinds of assignment in them but
the gure indicates the relationship between expatriation
purposes and talent management.
A valuable aspect of talent development will be, in many cases,
the expatriation experience. The global-assignment-success cycle
can develop global leaders within the organization assuming that
(1) they have been selected effectively, (2) they use their time
abroad to develop their competencies and (3) they return
successfully to their organization (Stroh, Black, Mendenhall, &
Gregersen, 2005).
The selection criteria have been the subject of a large body of
literature, with emphasis placed especially on criteria such as
partner support and communication skills (Franke & Nicholson,
2002). However, criteria that are centered on expatriate development within the logic of talent management, such as leadership
qualities, or alignment between personal and corporate values, are
mostly overlooked in the literature. The focus on technical skills
found in the early research has persisted (Anderson, 2005; Zeira &
Banai, 1985) and, indeed, the process by which employees are
selected for expatriation is often not as formalized as one might
expect (Harris & Brewster, 1999).
Adjustment and performance while on assignment has been
examined frequently since the seminal conceptual work on
adjustment by Black, Mendenhall and Oddou (1991). Their
identication of adjustment as consisting of three (somewhat
overlapping) facets of adjustment to work, to interacting with
host nationals and to the general environment has been much
replicated (see Bhaskar-Shrinivas, Harrison, Shaffer, & Luk, 2005).
It has also increasingly often been critiqued (Haslberger &

Strategic
Develop Individuals

Expatriate
assignment
purposes

Control

Coordination

Fill Positions
Short-term
Low

Talent Management

Fig. 1. Expatriation purposes and talent management.

High

J.-L. Cerdin, C. Brewster / Journal of World Business 49 (2014) 245252

Brewster, 2009; Hippler, 2006; Stahl & Caligiuri, 2005; Thomas &
Lazarova, 2006). The weakness in this line of research is its failure
to establish an evidential link between expatriate adjustment and
rm performance see, for example, Gong (2003) versus Colakoglu
and Caligiuri (2008) and Gaur, Delios and Singh (2007). Much less
attention has been paid to the developmental results of the
assignment (though see the use of the career capital concept noted
below).
Repatriation management remains an organizational weakness in international mobility (Kraimer, Shaffer, & Bolino, 2009;
Lazarova & Cerdin, 2007; Shaffer et al., 2012). Although the
expatriation is nearly always a success for those individuals who
went abroad, they often leave the company upon return (Suutari &
Brewster, 2003). Given the investment that the organization has
made in their development and the fact that they are likely to nd
work with competitors, this is hardly an example of good talent
management. Short-term approaches to repatriation, devoid of
strategic management, result in repatriation not being managed
effectively (Farndale, Scullion, & Sparrow, 2010). On the other
hand, repatriation is more likely to be a success for those
individuals who were sent abroad with the explicit goal of
developing their skills as key employees within the assigning
organization (Cerdin, 2008; Suutari, Riusala, Brewster, & Syrjakari, 2013). Because their expatriation was perceived from the
outset as yet another stage in their overall career development,
within a broader logic of human resource management, the
chance of expatriate management leading to satisfactory results
for both the organization and the employee is higher. Expatriation
management should not be seen as separate from the overall HRM
policy.
3. A global HRM approach to expatriation and talent
management
A conception of talent management as broader than the
segmentation approach locates it within a global HRM strategy and
may well include expatriation within it. Here, expatriation is seen
as an invaluable developmental experience offered to employees
being assigned abroad, rather than restricted to just the declared
developmental assignments, and is seen as an additional weapon
in the armory of talent-management specialists. On occasion
business requirements may demand short-term or ad hoc
responses to crises, with expatriate management being limited
to the administrative aspects, such as legal contracts and
preparation of the expatriation package. Under a talent-management philosophy, the developmental experience of expatriation
and its long-term impact on the individual and the organization
come to be seen as its crux. If strategic human resource
management is dened as the art of taking effective decisions
about the management of people (Cascio & Boudreau, 2012) then
such decisions about talent management and expatriation fall
neatly under the Global HRM approach to expatriation and talent.
This talent-management concept of expatriation involves it
being thought about and implemented as an element of an overall
global approach to HRM. Here, individuals careers are placed at
the heart of expatriation management as a crucial aspect of talent
management (Cerdin & Le Pargneux, 2009). This view assists in
ensuring that the different stages of an expatriation, before, during
and after, are closely integrated with one another and helps toward
better integration of international work experiences with the rest
of the employees work experiences. Repatriation failures concern
the typical loss of between a quarter and a third of employees from
the rm (Black & Gregeresen, 1999; Suutari & Brewster, 2000,
2003). Survey reports such as the Brookeld Global Relocation
Trends (2012) still indicate that retention of international
employees is a problem, both during the international assignment,

247

with 22% of international assignees leaving their company while

on assignment, with 24% leaving within one year of repatriation,
and 26% between the rst and second year of repatriation. Whilst
the survey may not stand up to academic scrutiny, clearly there are
a signicant number of cases of losses stemming from this lack of
integration and lack of dealing with expatriation as a career issue at
the core of talent management. Integrating expatriation management into broader HRM policies, with a particular accent on career
management, requires a change of organizational mindset, from a
basically administrative (pay and conditions) approach to a more
strategic one. More than three decades of research and progress in
the eld related to expatriation management have not succeeded
in making expatriation management an integrated element of
strategic human resource management.
In learning-related careers individuals are expected to pursue
an intelligent career articulated around three types of knowing,
namely knowing-why, knowing-whom and knowing-how (DeFillippi & Arthur, 1994; Jokinen, Brewster, & Suutari, 2008). These
three forms of knowing are pivotal to the development of career
capital or the resources that an individual has to advance their
career. Knowing-why refers to why individuals work, which is
related to their values and interests. Knowing-whom refers to
networking, dened broadly, including professional and personal
relationships. Knowing-how refers to the skills and competencies
employees can offer to internal (their organization) or external
labor markets.
Career capital is particularly important for expatriates, whatever the purposes of their assignment, either short-term or
strategic, as it constitutes the foundation of their employability.
Career anchors, which are an aspect of the knowing-why, reect a
persons values and interests in terms of career orientation, and
thus contribute to expatriate success both during the expatriation
phase and during the repatriation phase (Cerdin & Le Pargneux,
2009). Knowing whom is also an important element of careercapital building, both in an international and domestic context, as
it helps individuals to achieve their career objectives and be
successful in their careers (Seibert, Kraimer, & Liden, 2001; Yan,
Zhu, & Hall, 2002). Network-building plays a key role since
expatriates can act as boundary spanners (Makela, 2007) to help an
organization in building social networks and exchanging knowledge (Farndale et al., 2010). Knowing-how refers to skills and
competencies that individuals can offer to an organization. This is
why the literature on expatriation selection has often concentrated
on soft skills related to the ability to adjust to another culture. For
instance, Mendenhall and Oddou (1985) suggested examining
different kinds of abilities, such as those that can be classied as
self-oriented and others-oriented. Technical expertise is necessary but not sufcient. Recent research puts emphasis on
intercultural skills. These encompass characteristics that international assignees as well as managers in global rms should possess
and develop. It includes concepts such as global mindset (Levy,
Beechler, Taylor, & Boyacigiller, 2007) or cultural intelligence
(Earley & Ang, 2003; Thomas & Inkson, 2004). Thomas et al. (2008:
p. 127) dene cultural intelligence as a system of interacting
knowledge and skills, linked by cultural metacognition, that allows
people to adapt to, select, and shape the cultural aspects of their
environment. Other denitions have been proposed, such as the
one coined by Earley and Ang (2003), which includes a motivation
dimension (Earley & Ang, 2003). Even though differences exist in
the way cultural intelligence is dened, researchers agree on the
fact that it can be developed through various types of international
experiences. The logic of talent management meets individuals
where they are in order to develop their skills, rather than simply
selecting them based on the skill level they currently have. For this
reason, individuals current intercultural skills must rst be known
in order for the organization to develop them further (Mendenhall,

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J.-L. Cerdin, C. Brewster / Journal of World Business 49 (2014) 245252

2006). Triandis (2006) believes that in-depth training can help

individuals develop cultural intelligence.
Cultural training is complementary to the recruitment and
selection process in the sense that it enables the organization to
evaluate and conrm further the candidates aptitude for
expatriation, and even to take into consideration their families
(Haslberger & Brewster, 2008). Multinational companies do not
implement cultural training extensively in their expatriation
management (Shen, 2005), perhaps because the link between
such training and expatriate performance remains hard to conrm
(Puck, Kittler, & Wright, 2008). The career-capital approach leads
us to go beyond the immediate requirements tied to international
assignments and take into account the long-term contribution to
the organization and the cultural-training requirements of local
employees working with expatriates and, indeed, all employees
who face intercultural interaction in their workplace. Therefore,
offering the opportunity to participate in cultural training and to
develop cultural intelligence and competences could have important benets for talent management within the organization.
With the diversication of expatriate assignment types,
organizations have more options in terms of identifying and
selecting expatriates (Collings, Scullion, & Morley, 2007). For
instance, since the self-initiated group of expatriates was rst
identied by Suutari and Brewster (2000), they have received an
increasing ood of attention in the literature (see the recent
collections by Andresen, Al Ariss, & Walther, 2012 and Vaiman &
Haslberger, 2013). This group of people with boundaryless careers
constitutes a signicant proportion of the workforce with
international experience. They are not, however, the only group
beyond the traditional expatriates with international experience:
There are those on short-term assignments, project work,
commuter assignments, frequent yers, and others (Collings
et al., 2007; Suutari & Brewster, 2009). MNCs are beginning to
take a wider view of the potential sources of talent in international
mobility.

A talent-management approach to expatriation and international experience goes beyond the few employees who have been
identied as potential top managers, and beyond those selected as
traditional expatriates, to integrate all those who might have
international experience, with the aim of developing their careers,
their value to the organization, and their retention. It may also
include those who might not leave their home country, but will
come into contact with members of foreign cultures in the course
of their work.
4. Toward global talent management
On the basis of the discussion so far, the concept of global talent
management captures the combination of the talent segmentation approach of talent management and the broader human
resource management policies that contribute to the management of all talented employees, especially when they go abroad
(Tarique & Schuler, 2013). Despite the popularity of the term,
there is no consensus on what global talent management
encompasses. Table 1 presents the leading denitions of global
talent management found in the recent literature on talent
management.
We derived our denition of global talent management from a
matrix crossing talent management and expatriation management (see Fig. 2) and we use that to develop future research
propositions.
In Fig. 2, talent management is examined through its two main
approaches, talent segmentation and broader HRM. Expatriation
management also consists of two approaches, one that is shortterm and one that is more strategic. Global talent management can
occur through either of the two upper quadrants, high-potentials
development and global-careers development. The lower half is
made up of two quadrants, named for the purpose of this research
as specic-package design and global compensation & benets
management. These two quadrants do not belong to global talent

Table 1
Leading denitions of global talent management (GTM).
Source

Denition

Collings and Scullion (2008): p. 102

. . .the strategic integration of resourcing and development at the international level which
involves the proactive identication and development and strategic deployment of highperforming and high-potential strategic employees on a global scale.
Broadly dened, global talent management involves the systematic identication of key positions
which differentially contribute to the organizations sustainable competitive advantage on a global
scale, the development of a talent pool of high potential and high performing incumbents to ll
these roles which reects the global scope of the MNE, and the development of a differentiated
human resource architecture to facilitate lling these positions with the best available incumbent
and to ensure their continued commitment to the organization.
Global talent management (GTM) has been dened in broad terms as an organizations efforts to
attract, select, develop and retain key talented employees on a global scale
Global talent management includes all organizational activities for the purpose of attracting,
selecting, developing, and retaining the best employees in the most strategic roles (those roles
necessary to achieve organizational strategic priorities) on a global scale. Global talent management
takes into account the differences in both organizations global strategic priorities as well as the
differences across national contexts for how talent should be managed in the countries where they
operate.
Dened most broadly, global talent management is about systematically utilizing IHRM activities
(complementary HRM policies and policies) to attract, develop, and retain individuals with high
levels of human capital (e.g., competency, personality, motivation) consistent with the strategic
directions of the multinational enterprise in a dynamic, highly competitive, and global
environment.
Global Talent Management is centered on the development of employees, and it includes both
High-Potentials Development and Global-Careers Development.
High-Potentials Development is dened as the combination of a segmentation approach to talent
management that relies on the development of high potentials and a strategic approach to
expatriation management.
Global-Careers Development implies the development of a career system within the organization,
open to all employees, and integrating international work experiences as a step in the overall
careers of individuals.

Mellahi and Collings (2010): pp. 143144

Scullion et al. (2010): p. 105

Scullion et al. (2010): p. 106

Tarique and Schuler (2010): p. 124

This article

J.-L. Cerdin, C. Brewster / Journal of World Business 49 (2014) 245252

Fig. 2. A global talent-management framework.

management, as it is understood in this study. An assumption that

could be tested through future research is that most expatriate
assignments fall into the bottom two categories (see Propositions
below).
Global talent management is centered on the development of
employees, and it includes both high-potentials development and
global-careers development. Our denition of global talent
management goes beyond simply developing a framework for
high-performing and high-potential strategic employees on a
global scale (Collings & Scullion, 2008: p. 12); it implies the
development of a career system within the organization, open to
all employees, and integrating international work experiences as a
step in the overall careers of individuals. Global-careers development reects the idea of return on investment, both for the
individuals and for the organization.
In this sense our denition of global talent management ignores
selection from the external labor market and focuses on
development. Development encompasses HRM activities that
enhance employees skills and competences. The HRM literature
(Lepak & Snell, 1999, 2002) denes a knowledge-based employment mode, which places the skills and competences of employees
at its crux. While global talent management encompasses all the
traditional HRM activities contributing to development, a critical
issue for us here concerns the provision of relevant work
experience, particularly including international exposure, to
develop individuals skills. This should go alongside retention
strategies so that the organization has a return on its investment.
Thus, development in our perspective includes steps suggested by
the literature on talent management, including the growth, the
deployment and the retention of employees (Collings & Scullion,
2008; Farndale et al., 2010).
When the emphasis is placed on the management of specic
individuals, we use the term high-potentials development. When
the emphasis includes employees more broadly and integrates the
expatriation management strategically with the HRM policies, we
use the term global-careers development.
High-potentials development. We dene high-potentials development as the combination of a segmentation approach to talent
management that relies on the development of high potentials
and a strategic approach to expatriation management. In this case,
talent is developed through international work experiences

249

(Shaffer et al., 2012). There is plenty of evidence that expatriates

and former expatriates believe strongly in the concept that living
and working in another country is invariably an extremely
powerful learning experience that people do not forget. Not only
are there the experiences of learning new knowledge and
understanding (know-how), but there are also new contacts
and networks (know whom), and, for the expatriate and his or her
family, the chance to think about what is important to them and to
nd out about their resilience in coping with unfamiliar situations
(Haslberger & Brewster, 2008, 2009).
Global-careers development. Global-careers development also
adopts strategic expatriation management. It goes further than
the high-potential approach by including a broader range of
employees, beyond those in the A category. In this respect, MNCs
from the giants such as Procter & Gamble and Nestle to the newly
internationalizing ones need to manage expatriates strategically,
and also manage carefully all other kinds of international and
cross-cultural experience, including those of people who never
leave their home country but interact with people from other
cultures and those host-country nationals in close contact with
expatriates (Toh & DeNisi, 2005). Not only will this have
immediate performance benets, but also it will create a wider
long-term understanding of internationalization across the
organization.
Specic-package design. Talent management focused on the
segmentation approach often involves the self-fullling notion
of high potentials. Organizations in this quadrant fail to
adopt a strategic approach to the management of expatriation.
As a result, the talent management department and the
international mobility-transfer department work largely independently. Ideally, the talent-management section identies the
people to be treated as expatriates, although in practice this tends
to remain a line management and short-term, position-lling
task. Then, at least in larger organizations, the expatriationmanagement section performs the necessary administrative
tasks, through the design of specic packages, to cater for those
few so selected. In the segmentation talent-management perspective, a specic package is designed taking into account the
characteristics of the international assignments, particularly
differentials in terms of cost of living, housing, and taxes.
Incentives are mainly in monetary terms. Career development
is seen as a desirable outcome, but is not central to or planned into
the process.
Global compensation & benets management. Global compensation & benets management captures the idea that the compensation system is globally established within the organization. The
packages related to expatriation in MNCs such as Shell and BMW
are in line with this global compensation system. This implies,
perhaps, lower nancial benets for certain expatriates, better
long-term career opportunities and an easier transition from the
specic compensation package applied during expatriation, to the
employees reintegration into the rms standard compensation
system.
5. Further research combining expatriation and talent
management
To date, research on expatriation has developed and is still
developing without a clear link to talent management. One
explanation is that talent management remains a relatively new
eld of research, lacking a clear denition (Tarique & Schuler,
2010: p. 128). On the other hand, expatriation research has tended
to be rather eclectic with no rm base in any specic discipline. As
blue sky research and a contribution to our understanding this
can be valuable yet, if the expatriation-management research is
not anchored in talent management, it fails to address adequately

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J.-L. Cerdin, C. Brewster / Journal of World Business 49 (2014) 245252

the challenges organizations face and, hence, to be relevant to

organizations.
The framework of global talent management presented in this
article is one of the rst to combine these two elds and could help
to organize research on expatriation management within a talentmanagement perspective, producing two main streams of study,
(1) a narrow or talent segmentation high-potential development
stream of research, and (2) a broader and more open global-careers
development research. In terms of the three sets of activities
involved in global talent management, (1) attracting (which
includes reputation management, recruitment, and selection), (2)
retaining, both during the expatriation and after, particularly in the
rst years of repatriation, and (3) developing, which includes
career development and training activities (Tarique & Schuler,
2010), high-potentials development will concentrate on all three,
while global careers development will concentrate on the latter
two. Furthermore, high-potentials development will generally be
focused on corporately assigned expatriates, whereas global
careers development may include many of the other varieties of
international experience including migrants, self-initiated expatriates and short-term assignees (Al Ariss & Crowley-Henry, 2013; Al
Ariss et al., 2013; Fang et al., 2013; Guo et al., 2013; Vaiman &
Haslberger, 2013).
Given the relative dearth of research in this area, our
examination of the options below is less a summary of what is
known to date than an indication of the limitations and academic
implications of our analysis and the identication of a research
agenda.

6. High-potentials development research

High-potentials development research would focus mainly on
those employees whom the organization invests in as part of its
succession-planning program. Surprisingly, research on high
potentials in the expatriation management eld is rather scarce
and is still needed in some key areas.
Proposition 1a. Position-lling and control remain much more common motives for expatriate assignments than talent development.
And, partly as a result,
Proposition 1b. Technical skills relevant in the short term are key
selection criteria for more cases than the potential for the development
of softer skills.
Research is also needed on the distinction between individuals
who have been formally identied by their organizations as high
potentials and expatriates. Organizations do not always communicate to their employees whether or not they belong to the highpotential category (Bjorkman, Ehrnrooth, Makela, Smale, &
Sumelius, 2013; Campbell & Smith, 2010). It is typical of
expatriates that they believe that they have been specially
selected for their positions. In one sense this is of course true, but
they may not have been selected as high potentials. This
uncertainty can give rise to the kinds of unmet expectations that
can lead to turnover after repatriation. When individuals embark
on an expatriation, the psychological contract between them and
their organization as to the goals of the assignment can contribute
signicantly to the success or failure of the assignment, and
deserves to be taken into account. Therefore, data from organizations based on their formal evaluation and identication
processes are needed to progress on this aspect of global talent
management.
Proposition 2a. The less an organization is clear about whether
expatriates are also high potentials (short term approach to expatriate

management, which is not a talent management perspective), the

lower the probability of expatriates career capital development as a
result of their expatriation..
Proposition 2b. Expatriates uncertainty as to their identication as
high potentials is likely to lead to turnover after repatriation as a result
of unmet expectations.
Further research is needed to help us understand what happens
in countries where the national culture is different from that of the
organizations home country. Makela, Bjorkman and Ehrnroot
(2010: p. 134) have questioned what determines whether an
employee is identied as talentedthat is, exhibiting future
leadership potential. This is a critical issue for MNCs that want to
expand their talent pools beyond their employees working at
Headquarters. If managers from headquarters evaluate foreign
subsidiary employees to identify who counts as high potential,
there can be a lack of immediate knowledge and cultural
difculties may arise. Some managers may be more efcient than
others, depending for instance on their cultural intelligence level. If
local managers perform the evaluation, there can be issues of
preferential treatment, cultural differences and inter-subsidiary
comparison difculties. As a result good candidates may fail to be
included in the corporate talent pool. In addition, the issue of
identication depends on the political interests and power
resources of managers involved in the process (Creevy, Gooderham, Cerdin, & Rnning, 2011).
Proposition 3a. Employees in the home country are more likely to be
identied as high potentials than those in foreign subsidiaries.
Proposition 3b. The higher the cultural distance between the employee and his or her manager, the lower the likelihood for the
employee to be identied in the high potential category.
Proposition 3c. The higher a managers cultural intelligence, the
more he or she will be able to identify high potentials from different
cultures.
High-potential development research should study how a
talent pool can be composed of talents from all over the world.
More research is necessary focusing on high potentials during their
expatriation as compared to other types of expatriates.
Proposition 4. Expatriates who are also in the high potential category
will increase their career capital more than those who are not.
Turning to repatriation, Stahl, Chua, Caligiuri, Cerdin, and
Taniguchi (2009: p. 93) show that developmental assignees, those
international assignees with learning-driven assignment goals
differ from functional assignees, those international assignees with
task-related assignment goals in terms of repatriation concerns.
Stahl et al. (2009) call for further research into the repatriation of
these developmental assignees, particularly aimed at understanding how high potentials consider the evolution of their
careers after an international assignment, both within and outside
their organizations.
Proposition 5a. Repatriates from the high potential category are
more likely to be retained after the international assignment than
those who were not in that category.
Proposition 5b. Repatriates from the high potential category will
have more successful careers within the organization than those who
were not in that category.
Proposition 5c. High potentials who have had an international
experience will have more successful careers within the organization
than those who did not.

J.-L. Cerdin, C. Brewster / Journal of World Business 49 (2014) 245252

7. Global-careers development research

Global-careers development research would benet from
examining the development outcomes of various forms of global
work experiences. Here again, we present these as Research
Propositions. In this respect the three dimensions of the taxonomy
of global work experience (physical mobility, cognitive exibility and
non-work disruption) proposed by Shaffer et al. (2012), who
extended the framework of Peiperl and Jonsen (2007), turns out to
be a good starting point for research questions. The expanding
range of global work experience noted above has so far been the
subject of only limited examination in the literature on expatriation management. We do not know whether certain types of global
work experiences are more efcient than others in developing
talent. Nor do we understand the extent to which each of the
various global work experiences develop specic skills and
competencies of individuals. In other words, we need more
research into the specic contribution of each type of international
work experience in the development of talent and whether and
how they complement each other. It seems logical that people will
become good at learning from international experiences but that
such learning may decrease in extent with each new experience.
Proposition 6a. Increases in physical mobility, cognitive exibility
and non-work disruption, associated with expatriation will lead to
expatriate high potentials having increased career capital development.
Proposition 6b. Successive international assignments undertaken by
any one individual will have a diminishing effect on their development
of career capital.
Global-careers development research, by adopting a broader
HRM approach to talent management, with the strategic management of expatriation as an element within that, helps overcome the
ethical issues related to the focus on a very small percentage of
employees (Swailes, 2013) considered as adding signicant value
to the organization, while being difcult to replace (Lewis &
Heckman, 2006). Global career-development research would also
examine how to attract talented people from different countries.
Career success has different meanings across countries and
national cultures (Briscoe, Hall, & Mayrhofer, 2011). Global
employer branding could examine those different meanings.
Research on global careers development could also examine
how to offer the kind of career paths to individuals from various
parts of the world, which would encourage them to embark on an
international mobility, especially an inpatriation or expatriation
for those considered high-potential talents (e.g. Harvey & Moeller,
2009).
Proposition 7a. Since all kinds of international experience can be
valuable, but with immersion on another culture as the most powerful,
there will be increases in the development of career capital from
international contacts, international teamwork, international commuting, short-term assignments and inpatriation and expatriation
such that the later forms provide more learning than the earlier forms
and have a greater impact on careers.
Proposition 7b. Inpatriation is a more powerful form of career
capital development than expatriation.
8. Managerial relevance
The global talent management framework has value for
expatriates, their families, and for IHRM practitioners. In any
organization a comprehensive approach to expatriation within the
talent management framework may imply different objectives for
expatriate assignment, different short-term nancial arrange-

251

ments and support packages, and may well imply a different mix of
short-term nancial arrangements and long-term career commitments. It will need to be tested in each organization as whether
that would increase or reduce costs, and what the effects on
organizational performance (short- and long-term) would be. At
present talent management and global talent management seem
to be buzz words for organizations, but they are more often talked
about than acted upon.
This article proposes a denition of global talent management
that involves a combination of expatriation management and
talent management within a strategic approach to human resource
management.
Global talent management concerns not only MNCs, but
also other types or organizations such as Inter-Governmental
Organizations and Non-Governmental Organizations. Beyond
organizations, countries and capital cities also endeavor to
attract talent (e.g. Dickmann & Mills, 2010; Haslberger & Zehetner,
2008). Whatever the level of investigation, organizations and/or
cities, global talent management, as dened in this article, with its
two complementary dimensions, high-potentials development
and global-careers development, reconcile two important research
elds, expatriation management and talent management.
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